The Giant Kyubey Invasion
by Sigmaringen
Summary: When a terrible new threat suddenly emerges can the girls work together to save their world?


**The Giant Kyubey Invasion**

Home felt so familiar that Madoka stood for a moment in the hallway unsure of what to do with herself. Somehow the thread that ran through the whole evening had been severed as the door shut behind her and now there was only the sensation of being torn out of a dream. It had happened though. The faint taste of blood was still in her mouth. Her face and eyes still itched from where the gunpowder clung to them. She looked down at her hands and worked the grainy residue between her thumb and fingers, amazed at how it had found its way and settled into the lines of her skin. It was too much to resist pressing her fingertip against one wall and seeing the mark that was left, just to be sure. Surrounded by the familiar smell of her home she realised for the first time how much the smoke had got into her hair and her clothes. She was washed in it, it was everywhere.

Her hand went up to her face, gingerly pressing at her cheek in the expectation of finding something. Madoka looked around as if she didn't know where she was and then went up the stairs almost at a run, stopping only when she was in front of the bathroom mirror. She groped for the light switch, not taking her eyes off the dim reflection of her face. The light came on and she blinked. She peered back at herself and ran her fingertips around the edge of the bright smudge under her cheekbone where Mami had licked her thumb and rubbed the skin there clean. Just to remember the sensation of it made her shiver, her face prickled with heat. She looked down from the mirror.

Then Mami had kissed her on the same spot and for some reason all she could recall was how steady Mami's hands were on her shoulders. She knew she was shaking at the time because she could remember her teeth chattering. Mami had asked her something and she'd nodded instinctively. It could have been anything, she would have said yes to it.

While she was still trying to think of what she should feel or think or say Mami had shouldered the rifle as effortlessly as a Swiss mercenary in a woodcut and taken her hand, her fingers finding the spaces between Madoka's. She sent one of the discarded guns skittering away across the floor with the toe of one boot and pulled Madoka along behind her, picking the way for them between the heaped up remains of the battle. The space that made up the centre of the labyrinth was already in ruins, masonry and ornamentation ripped by gunfire. What were left of the witch's familiars lay in windrows where they had been shot down, their attitudes made even more strange and contorted by the violence of their deaths.

Occasionally Mami would turn to look at one as she passed it as if she recognised it or remembered the shot which felled it. Everything in her behaviour gave the appearance of a studied and casual contempt, even the weapon draped across her shoulders looked like it was daring something she had already beaten to try its luck again. Madoka half thought that if she hadn't been here Mami might have gone in procession through her handiwork like a conquering army. Somehow she had taken possession of everything there.

Something deep in Madoka's Asiatic blood told her it was always the same with these long-legged, blonde beasts... the Teutoberger Wald drinking its three legions; the Franks rolling the shattered blocks of the Roman world back together; the Normans mastering England and hacking a crescent through the Mediterranean; the later Reich lancing through the Ardennes; always where there were forests and labyrinths of conscience would untroubled, commanding, warlike spirits like Mami possess them and break down the bedroom doors of silly, civilised little schoolgirls and throw them kicking over their shoulders like booty and cart them off through the night to their palatial apartments to throw them down onto their beds and and and then sit up in bed smoking and reading de Maistre like nothing had happened and and... The fingers closed more tightly around hers. Mami leaned forward under the weight of the gun and led her out.

The sky was already darkening overhead. The street lights were beginning to come on. For as long as they were walking Madoka tried to think of something to say, finally content to follow along at arm's length and lose herself in how surreal everything normal around her felt. One or twice she closed her eyes and tried to ignore everything except Mami's hand against hers, hoping that Mami didn't choose those moments to turn around and ask what she was doing. She was like that when Mami stopped.

"You can walk alongside me, you know," Mami said, looking up at Madoka's house and then glancing over her shoulder at the girl. "I won't mind."

Madoka blushed and looked away. Neither of them spoke.

"Where are you going now?" Madoka asked.

"Home."

The hand slackened around hers and Madoka clutched at it again before she knew what she was doing.

"I brought you back," Mami told her, "I wouldn't do that for everybody. Enjoy it."

"You don't have to go," Madoka's voice was wavering. "You can stay, really. I'm sure it would be..."

"This does mean you can't say anything when we end up outside my home like this," she smiled a little too sternly for it to be entirely kind and cupped the girl's chin with one hand. The look on Madoka's face made her feel like Frederick the Great at Leuthen.

It was only half a lie. She picked her route through the streets until she came to another floodlit art-directed public space which seemed to typify the district's approach to urban planning. Mami didn't mind it, though; the dominating architecture made her feel at home. The other of her sister-elite was already waiting for her.

"I'm late," Mami said, stopping. "I apologise."

"It doesn't matter," Homura replied.

"So-"

"We'll both take her together," Homura declared without waiting. "You go in slowly on the right."

"That's a deal. What's next?" Mami smiled, hoping she looked as predatory as she felt. "What, you're disappointed we didn't squabble over it like schoolgirls? Didn't you have anything else planned?"

Whatever Homura was thinking she didn't betray it. Mami studied her for a moment, waiting for something and then became decisive.

"You can stand here all night if you want. Or you can go back to wherever you came from and wear that expression the whole time even when you're alone as if it will impress anybody. Or you can come back to my place and watch Where Eagles Dare on Blu-ray with me."

Homura fidgeted.

"I'm not doing _that_ with you."

"You know it doesn't count if we fight afterwards," she inclined her head in a way that suggested something, her tongue pressed into the corner of her mouth as she did, and then turned smartly on her heels. She hadn't gone a hundred paces when she heard the footsteps following her.

Later a Giant Kyubey invaded and they all defeated him.

_The End_


End file.
